Dorena solves
middle-school
attendance issue

Recently, low attendance numbers at Dorena’s middle school caused officials at South Lane School District to consider discontinuing the middle-school program there.

“I haven’t been here long, but I noticed that for the last five to six years enrollment in the middle school program has been down continually,” said Dorena Principal Teresa Martindale. “After last year’s class graduated, we were left with the lowest numbers we’d had in some time.”

Martindale said the situation, which found only 12 students enrolled in a program with a capacity of over 25, demanded new thinking.

We knew it was time to take inventory of what we were doing at the middle school and find a workable solution,” she said. “We talked to a lot of people, from teachers and community members to students because we wanted to know why people were making different (school) choices.”